South County Independent

From choosing the subject to the countless decisions involved in selecting images, scenes, statistics and quotes, the filmmaker establishes a point of view that can potentially overwhelm the story, especially when the topic is as emotionally charged as the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church.

"Every edit is a manipulation," said Mary Healey-Conlon, a lecturer in communications and film studies at the University of Rhode Island, whose documentary, "Holy Water-Gate: Abuse Cover-Up in the Catholic Church," will be screened at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Coolidge Movie Theater in Brookline, Mass.

"I knew early on that I would include my own voice in the film. One of the priests was someone I knew as a kid, and so it was real for me, this crisis of identity and crisis of faith. I thought that kind of disclosure was important to the integrity of the film. In terms of the construct of stories and varying points of view, I tried to keep what was essential and true. At the end of the film, I want the audience to draw their own conclusions."

The film just had its U.S. premiere before a packed house at URI. It also has been sold to television stations in Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Spain and Denmark. French, German and U.S. broadcasting rights are being negotiated. Critics already have chimed in with glowing reviews, and Healey-Conlon was notified recently that she won a CINE Golden Eagle Award. Prior recipients of the prestigious honor include Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Ken Burns.

Sipping from a latte at a coffee shop near her home in Warren, Healey-Conlon described the journey involved in writing, directing, producing and narrating her first hour-long documentary. While working as a legal assistant on behalf of some of the victims, she discovered that Father James Silva, pastor at St. Matthews Church in Cranston, was one of the priests who had been sexually abusing children. (The Diocese of Providence transferred him to 12 parishes over 16 years.)

An early image in the documentary shows her grandfather, Jim Healey, a communicant at St. Matthews when Silva was there, receiving a blessing as he became one of the first ordained deacons in the Catholic Church in Rhode Island.

"What I saw was people were not wanting to believe it was happening," Healey-Conlon said. "That is part of the reason perpetrators can keep doing what they do. They prey on our sense of goodwill, the fact that people won't say anything. And even when some of the survivors wanted to tell their stories, people didn't want to listen."

Beginning in 1999 and continuing over a five-year period, Healey-Conlon made 350 videos, whittling down the footage to 56 minutes. She spent countless hours researching grainy TV news footage, accessing court documents, studying newspaper accounts, checking leads on the Internet and collecting images and interviews. She ran up a tab of $180,000 and actually ran out of money at one point, only resuming production after refinancing her house and receiving some financial help from her parents.

She persevered, driven by her compulsion to create this public confessional of sorts, a multi-dimensional look at the scandal from all relevant points of view. Included in the final edit are a series of interviews with victims as well as abusers, members of laity and hierarchy, priests who spoke out against church practice and cardinals who defend it. Collectively the interviews paint a vivid, disturbing portrait of systemic abuse, detailing how it happened and how it was allowed to continue over what is known to be a 50-year span in eye-opening, occasionally jaw-dropping, testimony.

"That's the strength, I think, of the documentary film," Healey-Conlon said. "When done well, they help people understand the layers of life that may not be apparent in another medium. They capture complexity. It's what good documentaries do better than any other medium."

From 1980 to 1989, only 26 articles about sexual abuse and cover-up in the Catholic Church appeared in major U.S. newspapers. A study authorized and paid for by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, conducted by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, showed that from 1950 to 2002 there were allegations of sexual abuse against 4,392 priests that were not withdrawn or known to be false. There were 10,667 victims. Even that doesn't tell the whole story, since the Jay questionnaire wasn't mandatory, and some dioceses refused to give out the information.

"Basically the mainstream media wasn't going to cover the story," Healey-Conlon said. "It was actually Oprah, Donahue and, to a lesser extent, Geraldo and Jerry Springer, where the public got to see, for the first time, survivors talk about the scandal and members of the hierarchy provide disclosure in a public place that was not happening in any other realm. Anyone who watched these shows, if they could see the difference in coverage in the news media, I think would understand the significance of what Oprah and Donahue did."

With more time and more money, Healey-Conlon said, she would have made a 90-minute film. The hour-long format, while attractive to TV networks, is a disadvantage at film festivals. She also would have liked to include observational footage of some of the interactions among the survivors and the bishops in conference.

"It would've allowed the audience time to breathe and rest," she said. "The film is pretty densely packed. It's like a 10-pound ham stuffed in a 5-pound can."

Scenes of Catholic iconography - crucifixes and hands clasped in prayer, stained glass and church steeples - are interwoven with faces of people pulled from scrapbooks, caught on TV footage and in newsprint, and talking on camera. Ultimately, the film's power lies in the illuminating, affecting poignancy of the various interviews.

"In a documentary film you are speaking on people's behalf," she said. "In that respect, you're choosing what to say. That will be the lasting impression for the audience, and it is an enormous responsibility. You're trying to anticipate, and answer, the questions that the audience will have, without telling them what to think."

The documentary begins with a home movie of a young girl walking toward the camera. The scene is Healey-Conlon's sister as a child, walking toward the church door where Father Silva had been pastor. While she's not completely satisfied with the opening, the filmmaker said it accomplished her goal of setting the right tone.

"I wanted to connect with the audience a common experience," she said. "Whether you're Catholic or not, most of us know that experience of being a kid, going to church and feeling that it is a place of safety and trust."

The scene foreshadows the sense of confusion, anger and loss of innocence that happens to everyone in the film and, by extension, everyone in society, once the scandal comes to light.

"I was trying to give the audience this visceral, almost poetic statement that I think everyone can say at some point in their lives they've regretted not doing something, not standing up to somebody," she said. "We've all been through that, and it changes us. Whether we act or not, that changes us."

Reader Comments

The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of scindependent.com.

bill bovee wrote on Mar 2, 2008 11:55 PM:

" I read this story as a hit piece. Your story starts out saying he shoot someone. Clearly he was defending himself. Why would you keep this smear on the net? "

john mckitchen wrote on Sep 19, 2008 9:12 AM:

" it is nice to see a positive article about URI football. "

Iggy wrote on Sep 20, 2008 10:23 AM:

" Brian: great job. I will be following URI football in the Indie now that the Projo has dropped its coverage. "

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